"Well, I’ve had two experiences at Sundance with films. I went there with Smoke Signals in 1998, which was the prom queen film. Everybody was going crazy for it. You know, Slam ended up winning the Grand Jury Prize, but we won two awards, we had the big distribution deal, everybody was going crazy, we were getting interviewed by everybody. You know, I had lunch with Ewan McGregor. So you know, it was great. Everybody was really paying attention to us, it felt revolutionary. And it was. And we were in a big giant condo, we had a big hot tub in my condo, so I never knew which Indian-loving indie film star was going to be in my hot tub when I got back at night.

Walk in there, hey, it’s Parker Posie. You never knew, you never knew who was going to be in the Indian hot tub. Popular place, the indigenous hot tub. Maybe they thought it was a sweat lodge or something. Maybe they thought there was healing in the water. But – so it was great fun, it was great fun. And then I went there in 2002, with our tiny little movie, that we made for $40,000. And by and large, you could hear crickets.

So I had both experiences that people are going to have at Sundance. You know, I had the Festival where I was ignored, and the Festival where I was celebrated. And both are valuable, because by and large, the getting ignored part is most filmmakers’ experience at Sundance – having a film get there and be excited and be hopeful, and then it just disappears. Because the thing is, the Festival itself, and certainly the Institute, is about the process, is about the creation of film."

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